Ubuntu
bcmwl package

  1. Bug #1387221
  2. Comment #3

Comment 3 for bug 1387221

Revision history for this message
Michael Zanetti (mzanetti) wrote : Re: bcmwl-kernel-source >= 6.30.223.30+bdcom-0ubuntu1 fails to see 5GHz networks and is unstable on 2.5GHz

Hi Christoper,

1) Here is the requested output of a not working setup, that is, no 5GHz WiFi and slow/unstable 2.4GHz Wifi:

mzanetti@noneyet ~ $ lspci -vvnn | grep -A 9 Network
04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4331] (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Apple Inc. AirPort Extreme [106b:00ef]
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 256 bytes
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
        Region 0: Memory at c1900000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: wl

mzanetti@noneyet ~ $ apt-cache policy bcmwl-kernel-source
bcmwl-kernel-source:
  Installed: 6.30.223.248+bdcom-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 6.30.223.248+bdcom-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 6.30.223.248+bdcom-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ utopic/restricted amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
mzanetti@noneyet ~ $ sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
MBP101.88Z.00EE.B02.1208081132
mzanetti@noneyet ~ $ sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date
08/08/2012
mzanetti@noneyet ~ $ sudo dmidecode -s system-version
1.0
mzanetti@noneyet ~ $ sudo dmidecode -s baseboard-manufacturer
Apple Inc.

This is a MacBook Pro Retina 1st Generation, but I know of people with non-retina MacBooks and the same chip, having the same problem.

2) The workaround requires downgrading the kernel, pinning of the old driver version, will break things like overlayfs etc. I don't think a click-for-click tutorial is useful here. Someone not knowing what's going on will inevitably mess up his Ubuntu installation with this anyways. For advanced users/developers, I think the current instructions are good enough.

3) No, b43 doesn't work for this chip either. I does detect the chip, but again only 2.4GHz and very slow data rates and connection drops.